Massenomics Podcast - Ep.98: Big Brad Neitzel

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

This week the guys welcome Brad Neitzel to the Massenomics Studio to discuss strength training, training with injuries, being tough vs. being stupid, being a wuss vs. being lazy, and how best to navigate through the aches and pains that usually accompany strength training..

Welcome to Massanomics, the world's strongest podcast. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Massanomics. Make sure you go visit massanomics.com. There you'll find the rest of our powerful content. While you're there, check out our store and buy yourself some of that sweet Massanomics gear. and buy yourself some of that sweet Massanomics gear. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of the Massanomics Podcast. I am your host as always, Tyler, co-hosted by Tommy.

What's up? And across the way is Tanner. Hey everybody. And today, making... is this our first two-time guest? No. We have Ryan. We have Ryan. We have Ryan. It depends on if you consider Sean a guest or a... Technically, since Sean's part owns the company, he doesn't count.

He's been on quite a few times. Yeah. But we have Brad Neitzel here. This is his... I pronounced that right again. Yep. I nailed it. Brad Neitzel's in from Minneapolis here.

And Brad is our resident chiropractic expert. That's the right wordage, right? See that? I didn't say anything. We're going to open up the phone lines so people can call in with any chiropractic questions. If you have any chiropractor questions, go ahead and give us a call. Let us know if maybe your back's just kind of been bothering you lately. Brad, do you get all of the time now people who are just like,

hey, my back kind of hurts. Do you want to just tell me without any information or context what it could be? Exactly what I should do. Oh, yeah, that definitely happens. What do I have to do to make this better? I don't know, just probably stop doing that. Ask somebody who's never seen you move or touched you or done anything and just ask them on the Internet. I think that's how you do it.

We're going to start today a little bit on the topic of pain with kind of lifting. Pain in power lifting, pain in just any sort of strength stuff. powerlifting pain and just any sort of strength stuff and the fine line between uh pushing things for the sake of getting stronger and being an idiot versus also just trying to not be a pussy um that the bottom end is where i fall some people push things a little too far i get hurt um do you guys have anything as far as like i guess i we had talked earlier about like like tanner your stuff with your shoulder and some of those other things. I would say you fall under the side of someone who is not a pussy, but you're pretty actually conservative with things. Like, for someone as strong as you are with the injuries that you've had, that none of them are probably, like, super major.

No, I wouldn't say so either. But you never ever are like, like fuck it let's fucking just shred this shoulder man no no i yeah i i agree that's probably where i lie i've you know gone half a year at a time without without bench pressing whatsoever so that's you know i don't know how to be much more conservative than that about it it's more willpower than yeah but at the same time trying to do some movements that don't hurt it but maybe still uh encourage blood flow and encourage movement to the area and some strength uh but yeah trying to avoid what doesn't hurt it brad what about you as far as like your personal injury oh my personal injury list is not too long but it's up there.

I have a couple. It's a grower, not a shower. It's definitely a grower. The best kind. I tore a bicep off. I tore a hamstring before. I tore an ACL, separated my shoulder a few times, other bumps and bruises. How many of these were lifting related?

The bicep and the hamstring were, and then a lot of the other stuff. Were those deadlifting? The bicep, I tore on a warm-up lot of those dead lifting or the bicep i tore on a warm-up for dead lifting really yep it wasn't even cool was it your it was an underhand on an over under grip yep do you oh so you still do mixed grip though don't you nope oh do you do hook grip what competition okay yep i was just like one day i'm like that's not gonna happen again and i just started so what what was the weight on the bar when that happened you're uh 605 it was right so there was some weight there okay um relatively speaking yeah did it curl right up oh yeah like it was one of those like have you ever seen a uh

eric lillibridge lift where the bar kind of drifts out yeah back in yeah that's exactly what happened on my elbow the bar drifted up and out and then when it extended it just popped popped right off went up to my shoulder looked down i was like shit did you or did you not lock it out i mean it was locked up got it up what about the hamstring did you do that lifting too or first time i did that was squatting okay when i was back in college i really didn't know what really was going on. So were you doing something wrong that that happened, do you think, or did it just happen? I think it was just poor movement back then.

I mean, this was almost 10 years ago now. The movement thing, too. So you've, what, Chris Duffins or Kabuki Strength, like you've done a seminar through them before too. What does that focus on when you did that seminar? What did you kind of learn there? What did you take away from that? A lot of the seminar was going over bracing and just being able to transfer force into whatever given exercise you're doing. Because the more efficient you are transferring force from the floor to the barbell, the more weight you're going to be able to lift. Even if you're not necessarily getting stronger you're going to be more efficient so like the

couple months after i took that seminar i was able to increase my squat not because i think i got stronger in three months but i was able to use those cues and all those all the stuff to just transfer force more efficiently and then we went over a lot of stuff i mean everything from foot mechanics to you know bench pressing to deadlifting, squatting, of course. And a lot of the other stuff is just like it's very basic when you look at it. But when you apply it to a bigger scheme, it's very effective. And it kind of comes back to correct movement is corrective movement. Like you don't have to do a special exercise for this or that to actually rehab an exercise like just

doing it correctly is going to rehab it yeah that makes sense and you you mentioned something that i've heard him talk about a lot like two things there the um the foot position or not necessarily position but just the the way your foot is connected to the ground and then also your uh bracing or or your core being stacked properly like a correct me if i'm wrong here what i've heard him say before is he doesn't necessarily worry about you know he's not caring about your knee travel or your hip angle and he that's not what he's focusing on if you focus on something like your foot positioning and how it's connected to the ground and that bracing, the rest of that stuff kind of just falls into where...

Just corrects itself. Yeah. I mean, you have someone that can't hip hinge properly too. If you can get them to brace super effectively, it's going to, odds are, fix the hip wedging or the hip hinging. Because if that's stacked, your pelvic floor and your diaphragm stacked one of my favorite analogies to use for that is a pop can so if you have an empty soda can and you start setting weight on top of that you can set a decent amount of weight on that before it'll crush if you take that same can put a kink in it like that that's going to crush right away with minimal

weight so the same concept can be applied to loading a bar on your back. And then when we're bracing, it would be the equivalent of taking that soda can full, shaking it up, and now all that compression inside the can, all the way around, up and down, 360 degrees. And you're just waiting to spray. Yeah. Hashtag waiting to spray. Okay, I get what you're saying here so did you feel like after

now he's speaking my language in a short amount of time you made progress with that did you feel like literally after day one of that you could implement things like you almost could have put more weight on the bar right away during the seminar when we got to the hands-on,

you could lift as much or as little as you wanted. So I didn't have a lot with, and I didn't have my knee wraps with, so I had to squat in sleeves. Like a real freaking loser. I know. I think I hit like 500 squat that day, and that was the first time I went over four in sleeves forever because I never do, and I did that without knee pain that day.

So right there was a big improvement right there between the foot mechanics and embracing concepts right there yeah one of the things we had talked about brad was the like when an injury occurs or maybe if it's not a major injury but when you just start having some aches and pains we had talked about how people who train away from it or don't continue to find a way to get stronger like when we go to like the we talked last week about dr mcgill's the gift of injury how you need to find pain-free movement and then move and we had talked a little bit about how if people say say you have a back injury and your solution is to well i guess I'm not going to deadlift anymore. So whereas you used to have pain deadlifting 400 pounds, now all of a sudden that you're weaker and don't do shit, you'll have pain lifting 300 pounds and then 200 pounds and then 100 pounds.

And then you're just going to have pain walking around. And then you're going to be fucking stuck in your house. And it really isn't because of that initial injury. It's because you just chose not to fucking continue to get stronger without re-aggravating the injury. Do you want to get into how that plays a little bit as far as like, you know, pain being a 10 out of 10, 2 out of 10 in that process? Yep. So I'm going to preface this with, yes with yes i passed my classes but i'm not a neurologist i basically got C's in those classes so i'm gonna try and explain it as simple as i

can here's the deal we actually can say all of these things without any sort of education at all tanner's involved in the egg business so that means we can say anything we want tanner's agricultural background yeah it carries over to everything we do. I don't know if you know this, but I have a history in heating and air conditioning. And the house is heated right now. You're warm, so listen to me, for sure. And I'm telling you to listen to Brad. Go ahead.

All right, so when you first get hurt in those situations, like you said, like say you got hurt deadlifting 500 pounds, it hurts, and then you were just saying, and then you go, you regress, regress, regress, get weaker and weaker and weaker, and now it hurts just to get out of bed in the morning. So what kind of happens, McGill talks about like picking that scab. So as you get more hurt and weaker, you'll become more sensitive to pain. So what could have been a 2 out of 10 a month ago could be a four out of 10 now. So now you're, you're just interpreting.

The same movement, the same inflammation, the same aggravation is going to, you're now going to interpret it as a more intense pain. So it's not your fault other than it's what you, it's not like you're a pussy. It's just that you like didn't. How bad it's got to that point. You just didn't do what you needed to do to improve because a lot of times with those injuries like you could hold up two sets of MRIs you know they both have disc herniations there's no way to know who's in pain and who's not like one of those could just be walking around perfectly fine in society didn't even

know they had that and the next guy could have that and then he can't get out of bed without pain so it really comes down to you need to find those ways to work around that stuff not necessarily work through it and then depending you know how aggressive you want to be with at the same time so like when it comes to injuries like that what I always say depending if you're a lifter you know you're never gonna not be in some kind of achiness soreness you know discomfort you know the saying goes you get comfortable being uncomfortable over time so usually with everyone's familiar with that zero to ten pain scale like if it's like a zero to three like just work through it now if it's like a three to five maybe you should not deadlift that day maybe you

should do if box squats don't bother do that instead if If that trap bar doesn't bother, but conventional does, maybe just switch it up that day. If it's like a 6 or 7 out of 10 higher, I usually say just go home because you don't want to do more harm than good. So you can kind of use that scale to when you're rehabbing injuries is what I've done a lot too in the past. That pain scale now, guys. I think we've talked about

this off what is what is a 10 because i view a 10 as like both your arms just got chopped i'm like soaked in gasoline burning alive like that's what i think so i've had some pain that i'm in the doctor's office and they're like well on a scale of one to ten how does it feel and like and i'm like well like right now or like when i do the thing that aggravates it's like when i do the thing that aggravates it i mean i guess it's not my whole body being on fire like literally being on fire so i'm like i guess like a five yeah well it probably hurts half the thing because yeah it always seems like when actually it is the thing where it's like as, well, it is as debilitating. Like when I had to deal with like my hip a couple years ago, it was like, well, I guess like I'm not fucking getting eaten alive.

But like it feels like there is not a fucking way that my hip could hurt anymore. Yeah. And so I always err on the like, well, I guess it's about a four. And then you just sound like, well, I guess it's about a four. And then you just sound like, well, what are you doing in here? Well, then what happens is they're like, well, because we don't got to give him any cool drugs. So I feel like I'm leaving a lot of recreational drug use. I always feel like that pain scale is something,

and maybe I don't go to the doctor enough is my problem, but I always feel like that, yeah, also that. It just feels like that's something that could be explained because i don't like like you guys said like a 10 i figured like a 10 would be like you're like on the verge of not being conscious because the pain is so intense white but not gonna black out but then like a zero like i mean you kind of always have something that just feels a little sorry so like are you really ever a zero either? My baseline of pain, I think, is probably like a three. So that's why those things are tricky.

I got a three going on in a few places. That's how I get on. But so as time goes on, and let's talk about back injuries and strength. Like, obviously, everything is going to depend on the injury, the person, the sport, the, all that stuff. But if a person gets injured and chooses then to just be like, well, I guess I just don't ever, I hurt my back. I guess now I just stopped doing things. What is that progression like? And how, how can it look when they stop doing things and how can it look when they get stronger and work around it?

Like what is the worst-case scenario when you do it wrong, and how does it go when someone does it right? So worst-case scenario would obviously be you just do less, less, less, less. And it's always less, and you're always weak to them before. And then you just basically become useless. Yeah. I had a PT professional that put it pretty pretty put in a good good way when he would talk about deadlifting embracing and those concepts that he would use with his

80 year old patient's back pain like just to be able to pick up their shoes off the ground he would teach them how to brace and they'd be able to do that pain-free and then he can extrapolate in the next and the next and the next and they get stronger and stronger and he always said like if you couldn't deadlift you're not a useful person because that's one of those skills that you're just going to need to have be able to what was like like half thor's tattoo there's no reason to be alive if you cannot do deadlift jp sigmarison yeah yep and that's literally like that that's that's right there yeah so so basically what will happen is you're just going to, like we said, a hundred pounds now you can't lift without pain and then you can't tie your shoes, you can't do anything.

And then you just end up with a spine in the back, like a fucking willow branch. Yeah. I mean, being stronger, not only that, if you're stronger, odds are your bones are going to be healthier. Like the effects of being stronger on health is just i mean we don't have to sit and talk about that yeah that's just kind of given that's why i'm so healthy so healthy all that fitness you guys hear me breathing um and so what about when we go the other direction with it so so a person gets hurt probably a major injury even say you

know herniated discs there's really not no way to reverse the damage necessarily how does a person work around that get stronger what does that look like from the injury to all the way to the point where like they're able to be strong get stronger and be healthy and move around again how would you plan that out for somebody and how would that go so uh if any of you are curious about a great book on this i would look into the gift of injury i mean that's with stewart mcgill and brian carroll from his god he had like a fractured sacrum multiple disc herniations and now he's back to squatting 1200 pounds like a real wuss yeah so it's literally it's none of it is too complicated it's literally finding the simple movements that he could do pain-free that you can do pain-free

or minimal pain and slowly build those up over time is that as simple as something like walking yep when you can walk walk yep so what he did was literally a faster paced 10 minute walk a couple times a day and then with the arm swinging, cause now you're getting that, that, that transfer force across the body and all those different planes as well. So you had an effort and you talked about that too. You started walking, you start let your arms swing a little bit and he's like, don't worry about what you look like. Yep. Just because that kind of engages that whole midsection.

Yep. The whole midsection. I mean, you can get into start looking at fascial trains and everything that crisscrosses across the body and everything with with those trunk muscles i mean it's not as simple as muscle attaches from point a to point b and moves this joint there between all the muscular tissue all the fascia all the skin like if that stuff's all working together to move it's not just like oh your bicep does this that's all it does that's all i care about i mean that's not the case oh your bicep does this that's all it does that's all i care about i mean that's not the case you can have something down down that kinetic chain that's causing injury at your shoulder and it's not even your shoulder that's how so many people get

frustrated with injuries like oh it hurts right here then all anyone ever does is look right there and then your time goes by it gets worse it gets worse and all of a sudden now my elbow hurts right there tanner maybe you're just, maybe you're looking in the wrong spot, Tanner. You need to look deeper. This thing. For those of you listening, tough shit. I'm not going to sell a lot on that one.

That's incentive to go to our YouTube channel. YouTube.com forward slash Massanomics. And watch these on video. Subscribe. For hidden bonus content. So, and then as time goes, you start to progress a little bit. Yep. It's literally linear progression over time.

And it takes as long as it takes. It takes. So if you want to do it in minimal pain, it's going to take longer than if you want to so if it's your mom you know she had a hip replacement it's literally going to be she needs to learn to be able to stand up start walking maybe start walking up some stairs maybe start being able to carry a purse on one side because it's a little bit on that one side than the other almost like a suitcase carry and now if you're talking like competitive power lifter like i uh strained my adductor two weeks up from a meet last spring i was about ready to pull up from the meet and then uh i i was looking a lot of concepts from like chris duff and a lot of various people

and like when you strain a muscle like inside that muscle there is no pain receptors there's no no susceptors there that's why when you take a muscle biopsy once you get past the skin fascia like it doesn't hurt when you take muscle tissue out so literally at that point like you strain that muscle now if you injure the fascia around and all that other stuff that that's a different case but if it's just muscle which i mean it never is but in theory we'll just say it was just a muscle sprain a strain so what you need to do is now teach basically teach your brain not to interpret that as painful because once it's it's even if you did tear it it's torn like that that's done if that muscle is slightly torn you can't reattach a middle of a muscle like that.

So what you would do is just start doing whatever is not painful. So like literally the next day after I hurt my adductor, I would start squatting to something higher in my living room, whether it's a small table, it's a couch. And then I would keep doing that until the pain. Why is Brad putting his ass on it? Just laying it on the would keep doing that until the pain why is why is brad around putting his ass on it just laying on the wall on the table we got to wash the countertops you weren't wearing pants of course not no i want as much blood flow as possible blood flow in a free range of movement yeah obviously now you never want compression. But yeah, I mean, stuff as simple as that.

And then I would work down to a full range box squat. Then I would work to a free box squat. Then I would work to just a regular squat. Then I would start loading that movement. I mean, I was squatting like that multiple times a day for the next week. And then that following week, I hit my opener for the meet, and I ended up hitting a squat PR at the meet with no pain in that adductor. So you just moved.

I moved. Just moved. It gave you what it gave you when it gave you. So for those of you out there that have something like that, or really just anything kind of, the key is to not just like, well, I'm just going to not do fucking anything. But you also can't be an asshole either. And I think in the sport of

power lifting it is one of those like tough guy sports where it's like you know you're just going to go until you start firing discs out about your back and um you know until your knees blow apart and you're just like oh fuck it i'm you know i'm here to be a tough guy but um but now there is some measure of pain that you are in that process that is acceptable, that you should maybe lean into a little bit, probably. Yeah, so it stems back to that pain scale that I usually suggest at 0 to 3-ish, 3 to 6-ish. So if you have something in that lower range, like if it's just achy, stuff's going to ache. If you're trying to push the limits of what you can do, you're not going to always be pain-free.

If it's in that next pain tier if you're trying to push the limits of what you can do, like you're not going to always be pain free. If it's in that, like that next like pain tier, whatever you want to call it, it's not necessarily, like if you start complaining and being a little bitch about it, like shut up. But if it's like, okay, this isn't right, I should address it. I just need to fix it. That's the difference between being smart and just being ignorant when it comes to pain.

And then actually addressing it too. I think that's a common one with a lot of people and probably all of us are guilty in here at some point of that is something hurts but you just keep doing what you're doing it's like you know you got to be like okay if there's something really wrong here and it's something that i'm doing like let's take a step back from the situation and figure out why this hurts and what i should be doing to fix that because you can take yourself down a long road. And we do, that does kind of go back to with The Gift of Injury, that book is where, you know, one of the things he had talked about, it always is eliminate the cause.

Yep. You know, it does start at that. So, like, if your knee hurts when you squat, you should probably change something in the way that you squat, something in the way that you squat be it the volume technique whatever shoes so that like you're you're trying to remove the cause one way or another because you can't just be like all right well i'm gonna get all better and i'm gonna go back to squatting the same fucking way yeah so always step one is remove the the negatives that's always step one whether that's something you're doing yourself something that's something causing you so and then once you go from there you all you have to do basically is

fix the problems causing it and then you just go to um once you address that issue because so many times like so many guys will be like oh this kind of hurts three weeks later oh it kind of hurts more four months later now I can't bench. And then you finally go see someone. You get whatever you get done once, and you're like, this isn't doing better. When you could have done that three months ago, and it would have probably helped the issue a lot faster. Maybe, yeah, you've even been healed by now.

I've seen a lot of guys like, yeah, it just hurts when I do this. Well, how long has this been going on? Oh, three years. Okay, cool. You certainly are tough. If you're going to be dumb, you've got to be tough. What about now? You've been training for quite some time without selling anybody out specifically, I suppose, what's like the dumbest, like bullheaded,

ramming headfirst into injury or through injury or re-injury that you've ever seen somebody do? I would say some of the dumbest stuff is just thinking they're, they're the toughest guy out there. Yeah. Cause like being the dumbest, toughest guy out there, odds are you're not going to hang around very long. Yeah. Like it's going to be pretty short-lived, no matter what. Just being smart,

I'd rather be smart than just being able to withstand. Because I'll be the first one to tell you, I am not the toughest guy out there. I just know that. When it comes to injuries and stuff like that, I'll be the first one to be like, I think I'll just hold back on this. And that's also the reason I've been doing this for

10 years. Dog's chewing on Tommy's coat. Oh, my God. Fletcher, get out of here. You big dummy. So you'll be a practicing chiropractor within X number of months. So through your education with that or just your exposure to it is there very many other students or those practicing right now that have the kind of

strength background that you do maybe you know i'm not even saying they're not saying they're necessarily as strong as you but like is there a lot of people like that? Or I feel like you would be in the minority of having your actual experiences in strength like you do. So there's a decent amount out there that have a lot of athletic backgrounds. So what I usually describe it as, there's a bunch of people out there that lift. There's a bunch of Kairos that lift. Where I'm a power lifter that lift there's a bunch of kairos that lift where i'm a power lifter that decided to become a cairo so like i have that 10 years experience in the

sport first and now i'm learning everything in this more of the the the other background of it so i can apply these theories and principles a lot easier it seems like that would be you know a huge advantage or could be a huge advantage for you or even like in, you know, when you're, you're practicing that, if it's me and I want to go see a chiropractor, I'd much rather go see the guy that can deadlift 750 pounds. And because when, yeah, cause I can walk in and say, yeah, I lift, I want to be able to keep lifting. I don't, don't really need to explain it beyond that.

And it's like, you're like, oh, okay, I understand that. I lift. I want you to keep lifting too. Not the guy that comes in and says, sorry, yeah, you just should never deadlift again. I have for real, there's chiropractors, PTs in this town who like will say that to a person. Oh, you'll never deadlift again. It's like, do you understand what you're sentencing that person to if that is really the thing like let's remove the barbell the tough guy that trying to pr your list that just a person is not ever going to hinge

down grab a thing and be able to lift it up yeah like like you said it's like i guess dig a fucking hole crawl in it and have them start kicking dirt on you because you're done yeah like you're only ever going to get weaker and in more pain because you don't have the fucking strength to work around it and then you're just going to die small and still hurt there's a russian uh strength coach i can't remember his name i wish i could he actually had a quote from like the in the 70s that was said he would never see a chiropractor that couldn't deadlift more than him. Yeah. That was his rule. Yeah.

Do you get any pushback from anyone else ever that thinks maybe you shouldn't be lifting that? You know, lifting heavy is bad for you. Like, have you ever experienced that? Or is everyone that you maybe do classes with or anything else, are they savvy enough to understand that if you're moving correctly you know it's it's a good thing to be strong so when we we when we push those barriers as much as we do i mean it's like it's not necessarily the healthiest right right but there's we're gonna go about it the healthiest way we can yeah and like yes i've

had that like a perfect example is my supervisor in clinic who I've been with for, I've been practicing with her for about a year now. Very good friend of mine now. When I first saw her as a patient, like, I was explaining what's going on. And she goes, maybe. You are the dumbest person I've ever met. She's like, maybe you should stop doing that. And I, like, looked at her. That's not really an option.

I literally looked at her. I'm like, well, I'm going to have to disagree with you. And can we move on from here now? She was like, okay. And that's literally what happened. So, I mean, even if they don't agree, if they can understand, that's a big, big thing, too, just being able to understand the concepts. And I think for them, I know it's just short-sighted, but for people who take that, for chiropractors who take that approach, it's like, well, it's no different than like, to them, I think they're like, well, yeah, I dropped a butcher knife on my foot. And the doctor's going to be like, all right, next thing we want you to do is to not ever drop a butcher knife on your foot.

So I get like that is a sensible thing, right? That is, it does go back to that, you know, remove the cause of the problem. And I get that's probably where they're coming from, but that's just not the long-term solution when it comes to a lot of that stuff. And that becomes bad advice. And not just for people who are, like, competitive powerlifters, but for people who just need to be strong to exist, to be able to pick up their kids and carry groceries and shit.

So have you ever hurt your back deadlifting or squatting? Nope. Nope? Nothing? Nope. That's good. Like, I've torn my hamstring doing that, like, bicep doing that. But as far as, like, trunk-wise goes, like, I've had muscle cramps that have dropped me to the ground.

Yeah. Or, like, actual injuries. Uh-huh. Like, when it comes to that. So do you ever need to see a chiropractor every week do you oh yeah do you really so what do you get done when you go uh it it really depends what what's what's bothering me that week uh-huh how do you choose your chiropractor uh is it a rigorous test you put them through cup size

so i see whoever i know is gonna be able to help me i'll just put it at that so that i mean everyone's gonna have their own different issues that usually like because when you're doing a sport that's repetitive like this you're gonna see repetitive things happen over again uh-huh like a lot of problem with chiropractors like oh like i went to see him he told me come back three days a week He did the same three things on me every day, and then I just stopped going. So, I mean, what we were trying to do a lot of times is you need to adjust what you need to find, and then hopefully they're going to be doing something lifting-related for that to maintain longer. But when you're doing something like picking up 700 pounds multiple times,

you're going to be placing stress and load on your back and on your body that there's stuff that you just need to be on top of. So like there's certain things like I get adjusted all the time. And basically what that allows me to do is before I was getting that done all the time, like I deadlift really heavy and it'd be like my back would hurt for a few days and then like it starts to feel better. And then hopefully by next week I'll be able to deadlift again. And now when I get treated more often, now three days later I can squat heavy and not hurt. So it's just being able to just recover and being able to come back out a lot faster than I was before. Yeah. So is this just like, cause I don't know

hardly anything about chiropractors besides i go and they just go crack crack crack crack and i'm good like is that what they're doing are you like having like other types of treatment done besides like just you're so cracking just just along with adjustment so what i do a lot of work is like soft tissue work so a lot of times people have heard of a grass and before yep so we do that So what we refer to as IASTM instrument assisted soft tissue. You don't have to pay a fuck ton of money to use that brand. Right. Don't have to pay.

Oh, is that what, that's a brand. Okay. Kind of like what, what, what was the brand? So grass and is a brand name.

Oh, it is. Okay. So like, have you ever heard like Duff and talk about IASTM? That's like the generic. Oh, okay.

Okay. I never knew for sure how that worked. It's kind of like if you have a gym and you coach functional fitness, as opposed to paying a bunch of money to CrossFit HQ to use just that name and anybody can do the thing. So you can do that thing, you just don't have to

go through all their hoops. So I took a course called Factor and basically it's the same but different and cheaper so explain how that what i what is it ia ia stm so instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization okay explain how that process works a little so we basically use steel tools that have different edges and shapes and what we do is like depending what issues going on where we're just basically going to basically scrape along those areas to like we like we talked about before like what would be a common area that people would biceps are always messed up okay

especially in power lifter strongman like nine times out of ten when someone's like oh my shoulder hurts right here the first thing i would evaluate is is the bicep okay because those muscles are small and they just suck so you're so do you get the do you do you lay them down or do they sit how does this even how does it even start so we would just start motioning out areas and seeing what's going on i mean just like we would when you get your your back cracked yeah like they're like they're what they're doing is looking for areas that aren't moving you know if you want to call it subluxations whatever you want to call it just looking for areas that aren't moving. You know, if you want to call it subluxations, whatever you want to call it. Just looking for areas that aren't moving as well as it should be

and basically make them move. And then if you have issues, like if you had a scar, if you had, like, muscle tears, like there's going to be, you know, adhesions, like a scar tissue buildup. And basically it comes back to, like, the anatomy trains like we were talking about before with those kinetic chains that go from, there's one that goes from the base of your skull all the way to the back of your foot, the arm ones, the ones that crisscross. And again, it could be issues lower down, could be causing ups.

What we want to do is free up those tissues as much as we can so that fascia, skin, muscle can glide along one another and the nerves in there too. So what we're trying to do is, again, eliminate those negatives that are causing any type of pain okay so from personal experience what that is is brad basically lubes up a fucking ninja star okay and just fucking grinds it into your shit is that really what it is are you putting like a thing on the metal device and so you can use like amylamin or coconut oil anything so basically just so you can get more of a glide on the skin tyler you're more of a cocoa butter guy right yeah i like to go nice

little but so we did like my elbow bicep kind of back up into the shoulder, back of my shoulder. And we talk about pain tolerance. I don't know. I know for sure I do not have a very high threshold for pain. Was it like, how did it compare to getting a tattoo? Way, way, way more painful. Really? Tattoos don't really hurt. They're just pokey.

Yeah. But this is like, you're talking like an implement that is digging along the lines of the grain of your muscle just like but it feels like there's gravel in there so it's just fucking and brad's not a small guy is part of the pain because the area is in pain in the first place though is that because actually there's some spots where he's using the same amount of tension and it's just and things are sliding smooth then there's times where it's just like i mean i actually got sent well this was from a different thing but my reaction was the same i got sent this from my sister who was there um a video of just my feet and like while you're having this done on you yeah and you can see here that I'm taking this really well.

Oh, come on, motherfucker. Is my feet just fucking fluttering and kicking? Like, it is so awful. So, like, how long will you go over? I suppose it depends on how bad the spot is, but, like, how long would you, like, if there is a bad spot, like, how long would you work over? I suppose it depends on how bad the spot is, but how long would you, if there is a bad spot, how long would you work it for?

It totally depends. Would you go longer than five minutes on one spot? Oh, I've done grass up to a half hour on some of them before. Really? I mean, if it's a bigger area. I mean, people are going to disagree with you on that, how long you should or should not do it. Usually when I'm working on lifters, they came to get shit done.

And that's usually what I do. Yeah, that's the frustrating thing. Somebody gets me, like, well, you know, we're about, you know, we've done our five minutes in this spot, and we did the back here, we did that, but let's just come back and get in tomorrow. And you're like, ah. I'd really like to be awesome right now if we could do that. Yeah, so what I usually do for that, I usually use that 0 to 10 scale again.

And I usually never want it to go above, like, a 6 or seven out of ten for when i'm dealing with power lifters for sure so i will dig as deep as it takes to hit that seven yeah so whatever seven is to you we can get there okay if we were dealing with like more gen pop people you know grandma comes in i'm not gonna obviously she'll never be back but that makes sense though because if i go to just a chiropractor like i've gone to a couple i don't haven't chiropractor, like I've gone to a couple. I haven't gone very many times, but when I've gone to a couple and I walk out feeling like, did you even touch me? And then I've gone to one, like maybe a larger man before, and I really feel like he's really doing something. I walk out of there thinking, all right, that's what I want.

I'm cool with something hurting a little bit if it makes me feel like i know something got done not that i know anything about what's going on but i just want to feel like something got done really puts some effort into it a little pain is okay for that to be tanner wants a large man he's okay with a little so. How does it feel post? I'll be totally honest. My bicep was a thing that was bothering me going up into the competition a little bit. Very tender.

Just grip, tender. And my elbow. It was a bicep tendon, not really a bicep muscle, but right kind of inside of the elbow. And after the competition, it was like, this is going to sound like I'm exaggerating. It was like near debilitating as far as the things that I wanted to do, like lifting. And I probably said this before, but like it would even fuck up my days with which I didn't need to use it. Like because just grabbing a plate and putting it on a bar to go squat, like that process hurt a lot. to go squat, like that process hurt a lot. And actually like every time we'd get there, I have to, you know,

raise the J cups to the cups to, to, uh, to squat out of cause I'm taller than everybody. And so I, I do that. And then I have to put the bar back up there and curling, uh, the 55 pound squat bar. I couldn't do without an awful amount of pain. I would actually have to over under it and like pop it up and that would hurt there just to get it into the rack like that so it was really discouraging it fucked up all my training i just had this like everything time i do anything it's gonna hurt and we were by the time we were i mean don't get me wrong this process was not pleasant

but by the time it was done like i i mean i can grab it doesn't hurt i can pull it really only feel any discomfort when i get all the way pulled up to here which is probably just something that's inflammation take a little bit of time we're talking 90 of the pain through 99 of the range of motion is totally gone and um that was tremendous like it fucking hurt though though, guys. I didn't take it very well. Yeah, so one of the cool things you can do with that is you can actually do that soft tissue work in the, like, direct application of whatever's bothering you the most. Like, he said it really bothered him, like, squeeze his hand, make a fist.

So then I would have him do that while I was doing that. So now we're, like, directly applying this to the exact motion causing pain. Yeah. So we're trying to like essentially like desensitize that area to pain by making it almost more painful. Not only that, trying to like free up that tissue in that area. Like if you're just relaxed there, like everything's not as tight. It could be slightly different the way the muscle tendons are all pulling. It doesn't hurt when I just relax.

We're not in the situation with which we have a problem. I grab a thing, my brain knows there's a fucking problem because that's why I feel pain. That is interesting, though. We talked about how you almost desensitize your sensitivity to the pain. Whereas if I feel that pain every time I grab a thing, so I stopped grabbing a thing and then I start to feel it every time I, if I grab a goddamn glass of water and the next thing I know it just hurts existing. And, um, so that, yeah, it was,

it was pretty neat when it was over. Are you able to perform that on yourself if you needed to no because it's i i can't put that much pain on myself so it's really hard i mean we talked about that yeah like you almost couldn't because you're like if you wanted to if you had to like cut your own cut something out of your arm like can you i think it would require the same level of mental toughness that when that guy cut his arm off yeah one movie where he got stuck rock climbing. Yeah, 126 hours or whatever that's called. Because it'd be like everything in your brain is telling you to – like if I was doing that to my own elbow, everything would be on fire.

Like, you've got to stop doing this. Like my left arm would stop moving into my right arm. It wouldn't even be up to me. What about like – are you – adjustment- adjustment wise are you able to like do any type of chiropractor adjustments to yourself i mean you shouldn't shouldn't okay i didn't know what the rules were on that how that was supposed to go so with all that stuff i mean it's just what the goal is you want to be as specific as possible for some of that stuff and like when you just sit there and like just like i'm totally guilty of that of just sitting there and doing that and that just because it feels good i mean

it's not necessarily fixing a problem but i mean if it feels good yeah yeah what about i've got like a superficial question about the grass and uh actually that's not the right term i guess what what are you yeah uh raston like i have you know bad skin really dry and i break out really easily i feel like do you ever encounter anyone that that like completely obliterates their skin by like taking a piece of metal and scraping it against them for 30 minutes or not i mean so first thing you always want to make sure they're not allergic to whatever you're using of course i mean i've never had that though because like it's super painful but again it's not

like i'm putting all my body weight onto that you know like something right here like i literally could literally be doing that there yeah and go somewhere else and it's like a 10 out of 10 pain so it depends how like sensitive that area i think as far as the skin like it really is you like you're pretty oiled up yeah so it is so it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like you're scratching dry friction what it is it's almost like it's pressed in and moving like that yeah and if it is really that bad what you can do is you can like pin the skin down and not necessarily be going against it so literally you pin the skin down yeah around like that and then go down a little bit pin the skin and doing that so you're essentially getting the same work in

you don't have to stop doing that. Lower. Hashtag pin the skin. Brad was rubbing Tanner's skin. We're playing a little game called pin the skin on Tanner.

It makes it extra interesting if you were not circumcised. Totally, guys. Totally. Okay, I was going to ask you now. So diving more into this chiropractor stuff, is there some chiropractor moves that are more exotic or unusual or unheard of in the world of all of that i mean i

again i know exactly where we're going with this i didn't know i'm gonna ask you about this one but i know if there's like anything else like you learn about and they're kind of like that's kind of like a weird move we don't really do that one so there's a karate camera yeah yeah like like it's like the freaking like finisher like like only a few people get to the level of executing this move so there's i'll be very political with the answer first so there's a lot of different techniques out there in theories on chiropractic uh-huh i mean i'm all for if you're helping people i'm all for that yeah i'm gonna do what i think is best yeah and i'm gonna go with that so there's a lot of stuff out there

that can get weird okay i mean i think you're talking about the ring dinger you've probably seen youtube videos yeah yeah with the towel around the neck yeah and like the first time i saw so for people that don't know i don't know yeah so there's the reason the start is i don't know somehow ryan like he watched a lot of stuff on youtube and somehow one day he's like dude i saw the coolest video i'm like what was it it's like there's this guy. His name's Dr. Gregory Johnson, your Houston chiropractor. And he just – That is his channel. He's like YouTube it.

It's Dr. Gregory Johnson. And he talks like kind of funny and everything. He like gets this person in. It's a video. It's like eight minutes long. And he has a lot of videos of like him doing his adjustments on people. And he just talks so strange. And he's like, yeah.

So you get this person in here and like the person's like bent over in pain and he lays him down and he's like talking through his whole thing and he's like yeah we're gonna perform the ring dinger and so he gets this towel and wraps it around like the lady's head while she's laying down and basically just pulls like as hard as he can and it just like i don't know if it like just does some type of decompression type thing so that's essentially what it is. So, I mean, in basic terms, you're just kind of like gap, gapping those joints along the spine. Okay.

And just the fact that you're using a towel, it's almost like you're ringing up a noose and just yanking on someone. Yeah, just use it, bro. So you're saying she's laying on her back. She's laying on her back, yeah, and he's coming from behind. And I actually think I've seen a video of the Lily Bridges. This was a while ago, but they were at some chiropractor in Illinois, and the guy did the same thing to him. And he pulled, and those are big boys, you know.

So when he pulls, the whole body's just like shaking on the table. I've actually had that done on my neck before once. So some chiropractors don't like that long axis. Yeah, I mean, I can see it. It's kind of freaky the first time you watch it so if there's like i mean there's a lot of other conditions you gotta make sure they don't have first obviously yeah um but like i when i get that done on me like i just think it feels good yeah like when you get that long axis decompression you know just like um if you have someone just

just decompressive joint it usually feels better slash just on a larger for the short term or not it's a little better is a little better so with that ring dinger it's very non-specific is is that the medical term for it the ring dinger yeah i'm pretty sure it was in my medical it's latin for something right what about something along the line what about something like inversion tables and stuff like that like is that sensible dangerous purposeful pointless i mean again if it's helping your low back pain yeah all the power to you i don't have like a lot of back pain i like just stumbled into i just have an inversion table and we talked about it we tried it before like i don't use it that often actually hardly ever use it anymore but like it is actually kind

of refreshing it's not like i get done with it though and like two days later i'm like god since i did that inversion for five minutes i just feel tremendous but when i get done with it i do feel like yep like oh no that was probably worth my time yeah like i'm never done with it going like oh that was fucking stupid but when i think about it i'm like that's probably fucking stupid i mean so i i have a good friend of mine that loves that thing he has chronic low back pain and it helps a lot i mean if you think about it from the aspect of so everything we do essentially axial loads our spine yeah i mean everything's pushing down down down down like i don't know what you guys like if i do a really heavy yoke i actually feel shorter yes feel yeah i just don't

do them the best way around that so six foot two so you have all all those uh nerve roots coming out of there i mean so if you decompress those joints i mean it's not just definitely not a bad thing to do i mean not not only that like if you hang from a pull-up bar after a workout too like not only that but it can help bring you into more of a parasympathetic mode so you can recover better it's going to help you relax more and when you can get out of that that that's be so sympathetic after a workout like you're just going to start to recover better you're going to feel better so i mean if you have a inversion table and you like it why not keep using it but it's i mean it's not like someone's gonna like pull on your neck now at the bottom of that

now when we let's talk about can we dial that up can we hang from upside down put a towel around our neck i have seen that video before like i yeah like i have seen faces of death i don't know what it was like it seems like it should really like take that to the next level yeah it was an isis video there was also a sword put a towel over your face and pour water on it uh just before i want to make sure we have time uh just your lift that you did yesterday yeah i wanted to ask about this i missed out on all the excitement so i i don't have anything specific to ask you but i just want you just have to tell everyone what you did what did what did you do what did you do now i lifted something heavy just like any other day of the week

no uh the plan was i was going to do 705 for a double after teaching some uh bracing and and uh deadlift things all day with at crossfit erosion throw that in there dope ass plug right there and uh so the plan was 705 for double then i get there and find out that the biggest deadlift at the gym was 725 something like that who had 720 uh california oh yeah yeah so then i was like okay i'm gonna put 727 on the bar because i'm not above it and and to be on the record i'm not exactly sure what the number was i just wanted you to do more it was actually 701 i just wanted you to do a lot for our for our own enjoyment so we loaded up the bar 727 and then i think i was literally like 90

seconds before i left i'm like i'm gonna double it and then i did a double and at the top i'm like i'm gonna do another one so then i ended up doing a triple yeah and at the top I'm like, I'm going to do another one. So then I ended up doing a triple. Yeah, well, even the triple, like in my eyes, it was like, Brad could have done five if he wanted to. There was a fourth there for sure. Yeah, for as easy as you did the second one, I would have been disappointed had you not done a third. You know, like as you were doing it, I think we all expected that you're going to do again for as easy as the second went.

So you said 727 for a triple? Was that a PR you said? Yep. Okay. And you said, you made the27 for a triple? Was that a PR you said? Yep. Okay. And you said, you made the comment, I asked if it was a PR, and you said the most you've ever doubled before was what? 715 was my biggest double before that even. So it's a pretty big PR then.

Masonomics effect, right? That's magic. And was it, did you have the kilo plates and the... That was calibrated plates even. So, yep, the kilo plates, and did you use the Kilo plates and the... That was calibrated plates even. So, yep, the Kilo plates and did you use the Duffin bar too? No. We used the deadlift bar. Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's not get crazy. It just went from like up here? They're Kilo plates, so it doesn't really matter. But it wasn't Sumo, so it still counts. We were having a discussion about bars though, and between Oki, Rogue Ohio deadlift bar, and Texas deadlift bar. Have you used all three?

Yep. Okay. And Oki is the least whip of all three. Yep. And you said you'd put the Rogue in between and Texas be the most whip. Yeah, so, like, if you're looking for, like, a nice deadlift bar that's very fair pricing and, like good blend i mean i bought that rogue the rogue uh deadlift bar just because i mean it's a nice bar

um i didn't want to call you out on this but you're kind of faced the other direction that yeah see i noticed that right away it uh kind of psyched me out is at the gym you were faced and i i thought about that and that was actually what I – my thought process was, well, no one was probably deadlifting, so Brad didn't know what way we normally face. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, it really does matter. It is funny that everyone usually deadlifts facing the other way for no reason.

I think it was the first person that ever deadlifted faced that way, so everyone did it from that day forward. Well, there's just that huge massonomics poster on the wall. Yeah, he went right for the steel steel cut out that is good and see we didn't have that there when we first started so i don't know did i put it on my thing but so the shot that i had was from behind so you can see him setting up to the deal and then around to the front it's pretty dope so yeah yeah it actually was a nice change of scenery as far as the as far as the footage we get out of that gym i'm to start squatting backwards and everything.

I'm benching backwards. I'm going to do all my other stunts backwards. Shirtless selfies backwards. Up the back. So what did you think of the gym then, Brad? It was cool. I mean. You said it's smaller than the one you're used to, right?

Yep. It's probably way smaller, isn't it? It's way smaller. The guys are, right? It's probably way smaller, isn't it? The guys are probably smaller. They're way smaller. It's just like a regular gym, but everything's smaller. Their lifts are smaller. The people are smaller. Have you used a Duffin New Generation Power Bar before?

No, that was the first one I ever saw. Okay, yeah. And how about a Duffalo bar? Do you use one of those? So we used one once at the seminar we took other than that i was okay i've never been able to get one how about uh i know so you're kind of you would say you're a you like chris stuff and you like following his stuff obviously how about the shoulder rock have you ever done much of that before i bought one okay and that has helped my shoulder health a lot and i love i use

it all the time yeah because i know my know my incidence of, like, pec issues, shoulder issues while benching has gone down a lot. I mean, because it's one of those things with shoulders. I mean, it's a very complicated joint because, like, there's only one small, like, bony connection right here. Other than that, it's all, like, soft tissue holding that thing together. And the mobility should be, should have a lot of mobility there and the issue with that is it's really hard to strengthen those end ranges of motion in your shoulders i mean you can sit there and stretch like this all day long until you can get that shoulder back but is it strong there i mean that's this exact same issues with squatting to

depth too i mean you have someone lay down on the floor they can easily have their shoulder their hips go back to depth so is it really a mobility issue or is it a strength issue i mean because if you can stand there with a free squat grab on a bar or something to hold yourself up and squat down and below parallel then why can't you do that with weight on your back is it because you've done the mobility to do it or are you just not strong enough in those positions to be able to get there so that's where that i think the shoulder rack really comes in handy because now you're able to strengthen that shoulder girdle and the entire range of motion i like to max out with the shoulder rock you think that has a practical application i have seen someone put 245s on that thing really

i did it with a 45 just today for the first time and that is pretty intimidating like well just the clearance just the clearance factor yeah the back like i feared for the back of my legs you know you should have done it like just with like a piece of plywood right behind your legs that would make me feel a little better yeah yeah so you think that so you're saying that's a great idea to do max out you'd highly oh i mean to do max out? You'd highly – I mean, you've got max out. If you don't know where it is, how are you supposed to program it? That's right.

So you don't know the percentages. You can't program anything unless it's percentage-based, so it has to be done. Brad, we had talked a little bit, too, about – you just mentioned how some of that stuff is more about strength than it is mobility or flexibility. And we talked a little bit about static stretching. What is your philosophy? How do you apply static stretching into your training at all? I don't. Good answer.

Neither do I. I also don't warm up, though. So, I mean, the whole thing with static stretching is now we're just elongating something before we're going to try and lift max me with it. I mean, just being in the whole like mobility concept is my thoughts on it is as long as you're mobile enough to fully perform your sport, anything beyond that isn't really like necessary. really like necessary and one of the things we had you know that with our podcast with julian pinot that he said is he said you know mobility and flexibility are two separate things right flexibility you can just pull on a thing and put a joint into space and it is whatever mobility is actually your ability to like apply force or torque throughout that range of motion so your

mobility is not a flexibility thing so just pulling on it isn't going to get you there. It's like you need to earn that position, get strong in that position, and then you will be given that position as opposed to just like pulling your way into it and then being there without the actual strength or structural stability to be in that position. Does that sound pretty much about what you're saying? So that's exactly what we were talking about with depth. in that position does that sound yeah pretty much about so that's exactly like we're talking about with with depth so is it is it really like a mobility like is it a flexibility issue that you can't get there or you're not strong enough to get there now as a as a crossfit coach where

i have so many people of varying levels of fitness that come in come and go you know i have some people who depth is like a major issue sometimes you know for me as a coach what how does a guy apply like that principle to progress people to the point where maybe they are squatting to to depth even though i actually i don't really care sometimes like honestly like because a lot of these people aren't competing but say i have someone who can barely quarter squat right now and it's just neurologically it's just they just shut down at that point do i have that person do simply air squats do i load them up a little bit do you let them get as strong as they possibly can in the quarter squat and see if it gets lower or do you

just kind of have them like how would you approach that progression so depending on the person the first thing no i want a unilateral sweeping resolution so the first thing is bracing the first thing i always look at is bracing uh foot mechanics and then their ability to hip hinge like those three things and then you can start them with various different movement prep drills to be able like get through different ranges of motion not just statically stretching something and then like i'm very proponent of loading that movement like you said so if that's like a goblet squat something simple like that to start doing and a lot of times like if they're like they've worked at whatever sat at their desk for the last 40 years like sometimes it's just gonna take time

like it just takes time to get there like they didn't become that immobile over the course of a day it was probably the last 20 years so it's just simple things over time done correctly will correct the movements and that's kind of thing we're like trying to just stretch so that you can get into that position is very risky because they've got 20 years of of definitely you don't need to be in that position locked into their body and you don't just want to elongate them into oh here you are sort it out don't hurt don't get hurt so with like the whole stretching thing like what would be like let's say you have sore or tight hamstrings, like what would be best practice then if you like, they are feeling tight and like you're getting ready to work out.

Like how do you kind of get those things going then? Like if you're not like really kind of bending over to stretch them or anything like that. So there's a couple of different things you could do, like different, different movement prep drills just to see what's going on. I mean, there's something as simple as if your hamstrings are just tight, I mean, you could roll out the bottom of your foot with a lacrosse ball. Okay.

Like that can affect your hamstring flexibility as well. So if, is it cause they're stiff or they're sore? I mean, if it's sore, I mean, that's just comes on recovery. If they're chronically tight. I mean, now we've got to look at why they're chronically tight. I mean, cause that whole fascial, that superficial backline goes from your head to the bottom of your foot so that's why rolling out the bottom of your foot with lacrosse ball can actually improve the uh uh hamstring flexibility okay or if say you're walking around with a really really bad anterior pelvic tilt all the time and now that hamstring is on stretch just standing there yep so if you still have that anterior pelvic tilt and now you're going to hip hinge now you're stretching that hamstring is on stretch just standing there. So if you still have that anterior pelvic tilt and now you're going to hip hinge,

now you're stretching that hamstring even more and more. Or if you're squatting deadlifting and you're squatting down, you're bending over with anterior pelvic tilt, that hamstring is already on stretch, and now you're going to start stretching it more and more and more. So again, just being able to brace correctly, you're going to have that pelvic tucked back to neutral so that pelvic floor and diaphragm is stacked okay so again it's just simple things yeah yeah

it all goes back to that what about so if tommy's just comes in he's feeling a little tight in the hamstring like is something instead of just standing there and throwing his leg up on the sink and leaning into it would like like you said loading that movement be you know grab a kettlebell or something like hinge instead of just stretching by just moving it in space would it be trying to get down and then try to pull back up with it you know so you almost get warm get blood flow that's usually how i approach so yeah so again movement's always key yeah just moving and then once you can dynamic movement as opposed to just once you can move you start to load that that movement then what about the just quick the the

foot mechanics thing related to the squat yep uh you always squat in flat sold shoes can the foot mechanic proper foot mechanic thing be applied also to a raised heel shoe or in your eyes as a flat uh sold shoe more optimal or you know is there corrective actions that you could take equally for someone that prefers one of the other or is your thing that you'd rather see them wearing a flat sole so it depends on your squat style like if you're a more of a narrow stance high bar squatter typically those individual squatting heels yeah if're a more of a narrow stance high bar squatter typically those individuals squat in heels yeah if you're more of a posterior chain dominant kind of guy wide stance pushing your knees out a lot then you're usually gonna be in flats more so but the same concepts

apply both ways okay yeah so basically when we're talking about that your foot is basically what's connecting you to the floor with that barbell so if that foot isn't working right you're not going to get in bail transfer force efficiently and i know like donnie thompson christophe and like they love talking about feet yeah i actually saw one i think it was just a couple weeks ago donnie thompson had a really cool one and he was talking about engaging with the floor and his his drill for it i think was just a stand on a towel and rotate your like toes out and you can just you can see you know the towel will show how it tightens up everything and that was kind of a cool way of seeing it and again i don't know hardly anything about the feet so it's so basically let's back up what's donnie know about

probably nothing i mean how much has he ever lifted not much only like 3k shots fired johnny less than dave hoff and literally no one else but so so you can oh yeah so i mean either there's things you should be doing no matter what kind of shoe you're wearing so in simple terms you can kind of think of your foot as like a tripod so you have your heel you know the medial aspect and the lateral aspect and when you're squatting deadlifting those forces should be dispersed evenly in those three points and then you can think of your toes as literally like you want to spread them apart almost grab the floor like if you're standing in sand and you kind of like push put your toes in the sand are you guys doing this right now yeah

totally right in the sand you're listening you're doing it now you're you're wondering you're thinking it would be nicer if you didn't have shoes on right now so you could try this as comfortably as we are because i'm doing it too totally yeah this rug is very grabby too yeah i like it i am a latch to the rug so that's that's what it is though you spread out they spread out like One of the things that Duffin likes to do is he will literally sit there and shove his fingers between his toes as deep as he can and move that around. That actually gives me anxiety. I don't like that. I think that would be uncomfortable.

Another thing he'll do is he'll spread them apart and grab a piece of paper. Paper cuts. Just to prove to himself that he can take it i'm a man i think i saw steve-o do that one time too i always get those two mixed up um what about now you talk about the foot having balance in the foot in say the squat now is that correction though like to correct that position that is that that can't 100 be just a correction

of the foot because a lot of it has to be with things like bar placement bar path is going to you know carry you back on your heels or forward on the toe or if you're not engaged in the glutes, you may cave in to the inside. So is most of that actually done with your entire body position? Is that the reason that we... Yeah, so I mean between the foot and that, it all goes hand in hand too. If you're deadlifting and that bar drifts out super far in front of you and you get on your toes, you're going to have a hard time getting that drive off the floor. If you're super far back on your heels, you know, you're going to have the hard time to get, to get that bar to lock out as far too. Yeah. So, I mean, it goes,

both aspects go, go hand in hand, but it's a lot easier to make sure that foot mechanics are working first. Yeah. And then a lot, sometimes that can correct. Then all you got to do is maintain that position. Yep. What about things like some of the issues. And then all you've got to do is maintain that position. Yep. What about things like angle of the foot and width of the stances? All that just always based on the lifter and their mechanics and their proportions and what works for them? Or is there any hard and fast rules, do you think, as far as some of those things?

No. Yeah. So basically, if you're bracing correctly your feet your your hip wedging it you're hinging at the hips and your your foot mechanics are well i mean everything else is kind of going to fix itself at that point yeah like you could get super specific like if you point your toes out in theory you can engage your glutes a little more and that stuff too but i mean that's getting super nitpicky where 99 of people just need to learn how to brace better yeah and that becomes a little too like sport specific sport-specific, too,

where if your, like, sport is powerlifting, it is about moving the weight. If your sport is, like, football or basketball, you know, a lot of the performance stuff they'll teach, like a toes-forward squat simply for force bleed from one side to the other. So, yeah, there's just a lot of ways to crack that egg, I suppose. Well, I think that's about got us through, guys. Brad, what else do we got to pimp today? Anything else we got to hustle?

Nothing? You better shout out the sponsors, I suppose. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. So the two big sponsors that I definitely would be able to do all this stuff if I couldn't without, the first one is Contraband Sports. You should check them out on Instagram and contraband.com they're they're all the wraps straps I use in competition the knee wraps wrist wraps they're

constantly putting new products out too and then the other one is a Southside athletic in Burnsville Minnesota if you're ever in the Minneapolis area definitely check them out too I mean we have multiple monoliths multiple platforms multiple competition benches basically every piece of strongman you can need turf it's all there i made sure to tag both of those in your i was on top of that where's contraband uh where are they based out of they're located out of miami florida and then they are going to be at all of the europa expos this year as well we're going to boost there if you're ever i heard they were going to take the whole massonomics crew to florida just like for fun going to miami maybe

like a good party in the city where the heat is on big willy style i mean that's just what i heard i don't know they seem like a nice bunch so, that is going to have us about wrapped up today. Brad, where can people find you on Instagram? BradNaitzel88. And that is spelled E-I-N-E-I-T-Z-E-L. Correct. Guys, we'd like you to do a little bit of, help us out a little bit here. We want you to go to massanomics.com.

There's, go to our store, buy some shit. We got Brad's repping the weekend warrior hat always repping always tanner's got a shirt that you can't buy and a hat that you can't buy i technically got a hat that you can't buy so um but there's one that looks kind of like this one that you can buy for what you're looking at there yeah you could buy that one yeah whatever you buy the one that's on my head for $700. Also at madsonomics.com, there's all our articles, videos, all the good stuff. Scroll to the bottom of the page, sign up for our email newsletter.

We usually, every once in a while, we drop a coupon in, some promo codes. Some of those sweet, sweet codes. It's like free money, but maybe even better than money. Because you get to spend money. Ooh. You know what they say, but maybe even better than money. Because you get to spend money. Ooh. Yeah. You know what they say, it takes money to make money. That's right. And I think that's what they were talking about is coupons.

Yeah. But also go to YouTube.com forward slash Massanomics. Make sure you click the subscribe button while you're there. That's where the video version of this podcast is. And we are getting dangerously close to the Arnold. And episode 100, this being episode 98. And episode 102. Which would be the two years.

104. Well, who cares? It's been almost a year and a half now, right? It's basically been like 14 months. My episode math. And also make sure you follow us on Facebook, and I think I've got everything covered. Email us at getbigatmastonomics.com And also make sure you follow us on Facebook. And I think I've got everything covered.

Email. You can email us at getbigatmastinomics.com if you want to give us money or talk about sponsorship stuff or give us money. So you can follow me on Instagram. I'm Tyler. You can follow me at Tyler F. And Stone, Tyler EFF, I am Stone. Tommy, you can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. Hold on.

Not you, Tanner. And Brad, one more time. How can people follow you? Brad Neitzel, 88, N-E-I-T D. Hold on, not you, Tanner. And Brad, one more time, how can people follow you? Brad Neitzel, 88, N-E-I-T-Z-E-L. And Tanner? The Masanomics Instagram account, the official one at Masanomics. And it's just been firing off some grade-A memes lately, people. Here's what we realize. Memes are more popular than podcasts, than information, facts.

Our thing right now is the, our most popular ones right now are the verses. Yeah. So we've got a couple more of those to come. There are some cooking that, man,

bringing that straight fire. Bringing the heat. So, thanks a lot for coming, Brad. We're going to, we're going to take Brad out on the town tonight in Rage and we're going to get a lot

of pictures of him that we're going to extort him once he's very successful. And, hey, remember this time how about some more of that free graston the freest graston so thanks a lot for listening everybody we'll talk to you next week and stay strong you just heard the massanomicsics podcast. With your ears, you're welcome. Check us out on Facebook, find us on Instagram at Masanamics and make sure you visit Masanamics.com and buy some of that sweet Masanamics gear. From your friends at Masanamics Studio, home of the world's strongest podcast. Stay strong.